Profile: Karin Louw, Karin Louw: Maverick Businesswoman, Mother and Streamliner Extraordinaire

What makes Karin Louw, the director of the up-and-coming Corporate Debt Management firm ‘Maverick and Associates’, tick? In an interview recently, she said that her Cannondale bicycle, her son Josh, and the not-so-straightforward challenges of being a maverick businesswoman, are what makes her world go round. Karin is an expert in the field of debt collection and boasts 16 years of hard earned experience in helping businesses, large-and-small, manage their cash flow challenges. She earned her stripes at the largest South African corporate debt collection agency, attained her Accounting qualifications, started a family and, more impressively, her own company: Maverick and Associates (Pty) Ltd. Her thirst for knowledge isn’t satisfied yet though, because with the launch of her new company she has also enrolled for a paralegal degree, which will position Karin perfectly to give her clients the comprehensive one-stop-solution they need.

While Karin has all the technical know how, she believes that here strong point is her love for working with people, and this skill has served her in good stead. Karin started her career in 2007 in the debt management industry, and soon moved up the ranks, and got to know all the facets of the industry. In 2012, her previous employed decided to implement Streamline as a complete workflow, document and communication management tool, and Karin was intimately involved with the development of the solutions. She soon realised that digitizing the debt collection processes was going to be key to offering a reliable, highly cost effective solution. Over the next few years she worked with the Streamline team to build a total solution, and helped move her employer out of the ‘bricks-and-mortar-and-paper’ (and spreadsheets!) mindset into the converged digital era.

She says: “With the paper-based system there were five or six hundred files lying around. We had no control over specific cases, and that made it very difficult to give meaningful feedback and reports to our clients. When we implemented Streamline, it was so easy that we could just simply look up any record and get up-to-date insight (and assist our clients!) immediately”.

Karin has found that daily processes were flowing much better from a management point of view as well, as she could keep track of where people were spending their time, what was happening, and most importantly - what was NOT HAPPENING. There was just no more excuse to drop the ball. Streamline saved her a lot of time and enabled her to be get away from mind-numbing administrative drudgery and focus on the real pay off: spending time with people - and with her family!

In 2021 she decided to go it alone, resigned and started her own business. The first system she implemented in her company was Streamline. And this is where things REALLY started happening! In the past 2 years Karin has built out her business, but also ramped up the development of her ‘total’ solution. Streamlines’ unique blend of task management, workflow, documents generation and archiving, emails and communication allows her to do the work of 4 people, as compared to how she was taught to do things a few years ago. Streamline now also generates her client reports, keeps track of commission and even automatically reconciles debt payments for her.

Karin believes that every person should follow their path in life. This has allowed her to ‘have it all’! Who says you cannot be a career woman and a mother - and a cyclist! She says that her “passion has doubled”. Instead of needing to ask for the permission of her seniors, she is now in the position to help and empower others. She wishes to continue using Streamline and said that “I will tell every new client about our fantastic system!”

Profile: Marinus Coetzee, CA and Streamline Power User

Marinus Coetzee, an astounding character with a hidden passion for earthworms, music, biking, reading, and running, is one of Streamline’s oldest and most outspoken advocates. His life has taken him on many different routes and he has gained experience in a vast number of fields.

He tells us in an interview on 15 February that he grew up in the East Rand and studied journalism at Pukke. After graduating, he worked for Beeld for a few years while he studied accounting after-hours. He finished his studies and qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Auditor while working for Fluid Kayaks in 2006 and here he came across Streamline for the first time. Afterwards, he moved to Rustenburg and started his own practice before he joined Peugeot Citroën SA as Head of Finance.

He has recently started working for himself again, focusing on forensic investigations, international tax and acting as outsourced CFO for medium-sized companies. Although things change, the one thing that will remain the same is that he will still use Streamline as his workflow and process manager. He says that “Streamline brings everything together”, and where other people use “grand apps” for every specific need, “Streamline’s strength lies in the fact that it does my instant messaging, workflow, email sorting, archiving, task scheduling, processes, database management - and the integration of all these things - all in one place.” Marinus says that he “can’t understand how corporates can still work with paper - it is chaos!”

We are proud to announce that Streamline will be collaborating with Marinus and two other Accounting and Tax Practitioner firms in 2021 to build ‘Streamline for Accountants’. Over the years we have come to realise that the accounting industry is complex and very process-driven, and that the Streamline workflow engine is a perfect solution for their needs and challenges. (Interested? Email us This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

We wish Marinus good luck with his new endeavours and thank him for his fierce support and contribution over the years.

Task Centered Management

The smallest building block of workflow management is the Task. Tasks are little pieces of work that need to be done by a person or a group. All a company’s small tasks come together to ensure that its overarching goal are achieved - look after the pennies and the pounds will  look after themselves!

In Streamline, we ask WHAT needs to be done, WHO has to do it, and by WHEN should it be done. With Streamline you can allocate, work and see how much time gets spent on it, ensure feedback, and set deadlines and on all activities in your business. Streamline tracks the progress of tasks. Users are notified of new tasks, progress or completion as they happen and progress and outcome is always visible - meaning that corrective action can be taken the moment it is needed - not when the client complains. The task becomes the carrier of accountability, but also of all communication and documentation and nothing gets lost.

By implementing Streamline no balls are dropped. You will be able to make sure that the right thing gets done by the right person at the right time, every time!

New and Exciting Streamline 4 Features

We have developed exciting new Streamline 4 features that our users can now make use of in their daily operations, such as:

-An easy-to-use and time-saving automated Document Generation of customised letters, contracts, and any other core process documents.

-Improved Workflow Scripting and forms functionality to help the team and the team manager of their key operations.

-Improved Reporting and Dashboard customisability so to keep track of performance indicators.

-Improved Time Logging so that one can easily see where time is slipping away, where more optimisation is needed and improve productivity.

If you would like more information on Streamline, just give us a shout at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We believe that it is important to create partnerships where value is unlocked. When Work Flows, Business Grows.

About change, lightbulbs and boiling frogs

You may have heard the story of the frog and boiling water: put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out.  However, if you put the frog in while the water is cool and slowly bring it to the boil, the frog will not jump out, but will eventually cook.